<<< Sacha M'Baye is jaw-dropping in this shot from Wonderland magazine. He was lensed by Xevi Muntané. More manikins later.

But first...

>>> Portuguese journalist and gay activist Carlos Castro found tortured and murdered in New York City hotel. His male model companion, Renato Seabra, a recent contestant on a Portuguese reality TV show, castrated him with a wine corkscrew before finally killing him "to get rid of Castro's homosexual demons". More on this story here.

<<< This is absolutely heartbreaking: "The first black-owned gay bar in New York City and one of the oldest black gay bars in the United States", the Starlite Lounge, which closed last year, has been turned into mobile phone shop. From Brownstoner: "One of Brooklyn's oldest gay bars and its first black-owned gay bar is just another soulless storefront devoid of its past life."

<<< The GLBT History Museum - America's first museum dedicated to GBLT history - has opened in San Francisco. Facebook gallery of pictures here.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Problem isn't gays, it's bigots. "I'll never know how many homosexuals I served with. Two for sure. The first one left the service after graduating top of his class from tech school, discharged for voluntarily disclosing his sexuality. The other came out to me after I'd known him for a bit. By the time he told me he was gay, I already knew. We ALL knew. How? Well, while the rest of us were talking about sex, he never talked about it. Ever. See, if public discussion of sexuality is a problem, it is OUR problem. We heterosexuals just can't shut up about it."

||| Museum of Censored Art launched. "Two men who were ejected and banned for life from the Smithsonian last month for protesting the censorship of a video piece from a gay exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery say they plan to set up a Museum of Censored Art in a trailer parked outside the building." More.

<<< This is Cornelius Dupree Jr., who served 30 years for rape and robbery committed in 1979. He has finally been exonerated by DNA evidence. Dupree was twice offered the chance to cut short his sentence, on the condition he admitted his guilt.

||| Parent One, Parent Two to replace references to mother, father on passport forms.

||| More on 5-year-old "Princess Boy" Dyson Kilodavis. We first heard about Dyson and his amazing family back in October.

>>> Nature, not nurture! Born This Way is a blog that encourages readers to "submit pictures from their childhood that capture them showing the beginnings of their innate LGBT selves."

||| First Mark Twain, now Mark Knopfler: The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council bans the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing, citing its use of the word "faggot."

UK

>>> A very Soho tale of a naked priest, a gay sailor twink, and a gay RAF serviceman.

<<< More on the phenomenon of straight boys kissing: 89% of students polled were happy to kiss another man on the lips through friendship, and almost 40% had engaged in "sustained kissing, initially for shock value, but now just for 'a laugh'."

||| Whatever we think of the couple acquiring a baby, you can't argue with this: "Elton John and David Furnish are about to give an affluent, loving home to a baby that need not have been born at all. That same home and same love were offered to a child who's growing up in an orphanage, with HIV, amid who knows what kind of emotional and physical deprivation. Just another bit of good denied to the world, by people in power who think they know best."

<<< Ibis international hotel group is hosting anti-gay Islamic hate preachers this weekend.

>>> The extraordinary life and death of David Burgess. "Last October, detectives were called to investigate the death of a woman under a London tube train. But as they traced her final moments, they discovered that she was, in fact, David Burgess, one of the most brilliant immigration lawyers of his generation. Here, Burgess's family and friends tell, for the first time, the complicated story of the loving father, brilliant colleague, sensitive woman and courageous person they knew."

<<< The Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive - the UK's only national independent GBLT news archive - moves to London.

||| From the BBC Archive, Male Homosexual, first broadcast in January 1965 - two years before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales - gay men discuss "their problem".

EUROPE

>>> SPAIN: City Council of Madrid takes action against Madrid Gay Pride "for causing alarming noise levels, with serious deterioration of the environment, and with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism in the residential area of Chueca as a result of the activities organized by them, within the said event."

||| JAMAICA: Standing up for human rights. "As Caricom citizens, we are proud that a majority of Caribbean nations stood up in the United Nations General Assembly on December 22 and voted together, in the words of the Rwanda delegation, to 'recognise that ... people (of different sexual orientation) continue to be the target of murder in many of our societies, and they are more at risk than many ... other groups'."

||| ZIMBABWE: Frank Malaba, the first Zimbabwean actor to come out has announced his engagement to South African boyfriend Lee Lucas Strydom, below.

||| UGANDA: The country's top opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, says the country's police have more pressing tasks than investigating homosexuality: "This is something that is done in the privacy of people's rooms, between consenting adults." He is challenging President Yoweri Museveni in elections to be held next month.

||| We are free to be gay in Uganda – for the moment. "The ban on the outing of homosexuals in Uganda's media is a victory for human rights. But the anti-homosexuality bill, still under parliamentary discussion, means we can't give up the fight."

||| GHANA: A history of homosexuality in Ghana: "Homosexuality became known when tourists, international workers and even missionaries flooded the country in the 70s. Those within the group who were homosexuals invited innocent boys to their houses, flushed them with gifts and money and promised to send them to the rich countries. This was one of the ways they used to have anal intercourse with the innocent boys. This continued and most of them became addicted to it."

||| MALAYSIA: Hafidz Baharom, a Malay-Muslim social commentator comes out as gay in a column in The Malaysian Insider, in support of Azwan Ismail whose appearance in a It Gets Better video sparked furore in the predominantly Muslim country.

<<< Learn about "hummus queens" and dirty Arabic, and how "in Dubai, everyone is bisexual." Yes, there's a lot of gay Arabs out there.

BODY & MIND

||| Young gays have as many friends and are just as popular and socially connected as other teenagers. But the composition of their friendships is somewhat different: "Gay teenagers tend to go out of their way to befriend youths of other races or those who are stigmatized for their looks."

||| Long term relationships are the key to good health, boffins claim.

||| Watching television for more than four hours a day doubles the risk of heart disease and premature death - no matter how much exercise you do.

||| It's "unacceptable", says Peter Messent, author of the Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain, despite "the feelings of anger and humiliation that many African American children and parents feel at having such a word repeatedly spoken in the classroom".

||| Delia Lloyd writes at Politics Daily: "The N-word isn't just a piece of regional jargon that marks a particular moment in our nation's history. It's a hateful word. It's poisonous. And it's pervasive... But this issue certainly isn't as black and white, so to speak, as some critics are making it out to be."

>>> Review: Annabel, by Kathleen Winter: "It is exceedingly rare for there to be intersex characters in literature..."

<<< Review: Hate: A Romance, by Tristan Garcia. "Central to the novel is the love-hate relationship between Dominique and William, who personify the loss of idealism in the French gay movement during [the early 80's]."

||| Review: Dancing Ledge, by Derek Jarman. "First published privately as Queerlife in the 1970s, Dancing Ledge is Jarman's own account of his life and art."

FILM

>>> Scenes from famous films recreated using Lego bricks by Alex Eylar (16 more pictures).

||| In London? Channel 4 will be In conversation with FIT actor Stephen Hoo on Tuesday 8th March 2011 from 14:30 to 17:30. You could be there.

<<< Review: The films of Derek Jarman. Cathode Ray Tube looks atCaravaggio (1986) and The Last of England (1987).

TV

||| Gay and lesbian characters are popping up on shows for young people. 90210, Glee, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Hellcats, Greek and the new MTV series Skins all showcase young, gay characters...

||| ...But there's a downside, as MOC Blog points out: "The problem that I see is that we are forced - yet, again - to accept that the stories of gay white teenagers are the most palatable way for an audience to 'understand' homosexuality."

||| Russell T. Davies talks upTorchwood: Miracle Day, the new series of which will star Mekhi Phifer.

||| Ghanaian reggae artist Blakk Rasta says what's expected: "It is not the normal concept of life. Every man must sex a woman and not otherwise. Homosexuality is a mental/genetically disorder, in my opinion." Amnesty International condemns his remarks.

<<< HMV to close 60 stores as sales tumble. HMV is one of the last major "bricks and mortar" entertainment retailers on the British high street.

||| How music-buying habits have changed. Sarfraz Manzoor writes, "If and when record stores do disappear, our lives and our culture will be diminished because they are a tangible reminder of when music offered more than virtual pleasures."

||| Gerry Rafferty, the singer and songwriter, is dead. He was 63. Rafferty had a hit in 1978 with Baker Street, "a drive-time favourite that tackles drink, depression and sex."

SEX BIZ

<<< Erik Rhodes takes to Tumblr to denounce Diesel Washington as an "overgrown black man booty poppin' like a Jerry Springer reject." Oh-oh... Diesel's responds, "With the Merger of Falcon and Raging Stallions seems someone might be pushed out the door, and so why not jump on the Hate Diesel Washington train to get some press for himself."

||| Erik made the (gay porn blog) headlines with veiled suicide threats and rants about feeling overexposed, but: "i least lived life in the moment... what can you say you did? Oh...you went to school and got a degree and still only managed to land a job as an 'associate' at TJ Maxx. Well BRAVO! And i wasted my life."

1.) The blog "Born this way" is too cute and hilarious! Unfortunately, I don't have very many of those "Oh we knew he was gay from birth" pictures. Reason being because every time I was in an unwittingly "gay" pose someone would stop and say, "Toddy, stop standing like a girl. Fix your hands." and etc...2.) I am so sick and tired of Black Baptists I don't know what to FUCKIN DO! Okay, rant over...3.) Another stalwart becomes a cell phone store. Aren't there enough cell phone kiosks in the mall?4.) I want to visit Dubai now.5.) Long term relationships help you live longer? True, you live physically longer but how many emotional deaths? Haha, surely I jest...I want to be in one someday but I refuse to stay just to be in a long term relationship if I'm unhappy. 6.) I want a pet spider monkey. Too. CUTE. 7.) For once I would like to see a black LGBT teenager on a show that is not strictly catering to a predominantly black audience.I auditioned for Glee but got rejected. F__K them!I'm not bitter though...teeheehee. 8.) I bet Bow Wow used to wear Omarion out. Please don't mind my fantasy...9.) Okay, when you are Tom Hanks' son that automatically renders your street cred null and void. That would be like Liberace's child trying out for the navy seals. Yeah, it can happen...but you gotta work extra hard. 10.) Erik Rhodes is so hot but he need to leave my man alone...11.) I really want to see the Peter's twins videos. Where can I watch them for free?12.) I loved "You don't need a boyfriend!" Perfect!

"I would also like to take this opportunity to squash the persistent rumours about mysterious 'disappearances' and emphasize that rural and urban areas are now enjoying a life of harmony and peace. I'm sure you're glad to hear this. And I'm happy you're glad."